Newark Police found to repeatedly violate citizens constitutional rightsMayor of Newark Ras Baraka along with New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman and acting Assistant Attorney General Jocelyn Samuels today announced the results of a more than two year review of the Newark Police Department. The Justice Department found cause to believe the the Newark Police Department engaged in the practice of unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests in violation of the Fourth and First Amendments of the Constitution. (Video by Andre Malok / The Star-Ledger)

NEWARK — The U.S. Justice Department announced today it had reached an agreement with the city of Newark to allow a federal monitor to watch over a municipal police force that it found had repeatedly violated the rights of its citizens, especially blacks, in the state's largest city.

New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman announced the results of a three-year review of the Newark Police Department at a news conference, saying, "the people of Newark deserve to be safe, and so do the thousands who come here."

"They also need to know the police protecting them are doing that important — and often dangerous — work while respecting their constitutional rights," Fishman said.

Newark will become the first municipal police agency in state history to operate under a federal watchdog — and the 13th in the nation — in just the latest development in a decades-long pattern of oversight.

The state has controlled the school district since 1995, and New Jersey officials have warned that if the city council passes its recently introduced 2014 budget, state supervision will be required.

The review, led by the Justice Department civil rights division, found that police failed to provide sufficient constitutional reason for about 75 percent of pedestrian stops; blacks make up nearly 54 percent of the city's population but account for 85 percent of pedestrian stops and nearly 80 percent of arrests; more than 20 percent of officers' reported use of force was unreasonable and violated the constitution; and officers assigned to narcotics and gang units and prisoner-processing stole from those they arrested.

'Opportunity to build'

Udi Ofer, the executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the ACLU, which filed the complaint that started the investigation, said he was satisfied with the proposed remedies.

"We hope Newark will use this opportunity to build a police force that is respectful of civil rights and that is accountable to the people," Ofer said.

James Stewart Jr., the head of Newark’s police union, said the federal monitor could prove pivotal in helping the department reform its internal procedures and help break bad habits.

"I came on the job in 1995, I think that was the last training I received," Stewart said. "If we have bad habits, I could see it being rampant throughout the department, because it just goes from one class to the next."

The results of the review come as the 1,000-member department tries to rebound from budget-related layoffs of nearly 170 officers in 2010 as well as an increase in violence that contributed to 111 homicides in 2013, the most since 1990.

Mayor Ras Baraka, who was sworn in earlier this month, welcomed the Justice Department’s findings and pledged to be a partner in reform.

"One could look at this, 22 days in as the mayor, that the roof is caving in," Baraka said. "But I look at it as an opportunity to build a new roof. We are actually excited — not about the bad acts of a few police officers in our department — we are excited that we have the ability to transform the Newark Police Department."

The city has agreed to cooperate with the federal monitor as part of a court-enforced pact. The monitor, who will be chosen jointly by the city and the Justice Department, must be approved by a federal judge in Newark — something Fishman said would probably take place by mid-September.

The monitor will remain in place until the Justice Department is satisfied that the necessary changes have been made.

Under the agreement, the city has promised to train officers on how to carry out stops and arrests that are constitutionally sound. "With this agreement, we’re taking decisive action to address potential discrimination and end unconstitutional conduct by those who are sworn to serve," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

The review began in May 2011 amid concerns raised by citizens and community groups over how Newark police officers were conducting their business.

The previous year, the American Civil Liberties Union had filed a complaint with the Justice Department accusing police of misconduct. The group provided statistics showing that only on rare occasions did the department act on complaints against officers accused of using excessive force or conducting improper searches and false arrests.

In 2008 and 2009, only one complaint of 261 filed was sustained by department investigators, the ACLU found.

The Justice Department review appeared to confirm that the trend continued in the ensuing years; from 2007 to 2012, just one complaint of excessive force made by civilians was sustained.

Fishman laid part of the blame on a dysfunctional internal affairs bureau. "That statistic is stunningly low for a police department of this size," he said.

Former Police Director Garry McCarthy, who ran the department from 2006 to 2011 when he left to take over the Chicago Police Department, could not be reached for comment.

And former Police Director Samuel DeMaio, who retired in February after 28 years in the department, said that among the chiefs from other cities whose forces had been placed under federal oversight, "no one has said it had a negative impact."

New leaders in place

Baraka said the bureau had already been reorganized, and that new leadership was in place.

While investigators were unable to determine whether officers intentionally discriminated against blacks, the report noted that interviews revealed a sense that it was an unwelcome part of the day-to-day routine.

Blacks, on average, are 2½ times more likely than whites to be stopped on the street, the report found. While Newark police conducted 111 stops for every 1,000 residents among whites, it made 283 stops for every 1,000 residents for blacks — even though the likelihood of finding evidence of crime was about the same for whites as it is for blacks, the report noted.

"In other words," the report said, "the stops are both impermissible and ineffective."

The Justice Department encouraged police to improve the collection of stop, search and arrest information so a more thorough analysis could be done. Fishman said some questionable stops might have been justified but not adequately documented.

"It is entirely possible that some portion of this can be laid at the feet of bad training or simply inadequate report writing," he said.

The reports also said there were "credible" complaints that police sometimes detained people in their cruisers without filing charges, calling it "a humiliating and often frightening experience."

It also documented so-called "contempt of cop" arrests, a phrase used to describe people charged with a crime because they lawfully objected to police actions or were disrespectful.

And, the report noted, officers were quick to defuse volatile situations by using open and closed fists to the head, even though "in many cases these actions were not necessary … and seemed to be simply retaliatory."

The city’s new police director, Eugene Venable, said the department planned to have supervisors work more closely with officers on patrol "as opposed to just having police officers themselves taking reports."

Former Mayor Cory Booker praised the Justice Department’s intervention in a news release, saying that Newark had "come a long way from these serious decades-long problems shared by cities across the country, but not nearly far enough."